Beneath the terror: shame.
Beneath the shame: forgiveness,
and love the color of warm rose,
swaddling my original innocence,
which is radiant gold like the Christ.
 
We are being born now.
Looking out from gold, through rose,
through soft forgiveness, melting shame,
soothing fear.
 
The world’s meanings soften
and loosen, gazing back in innocence
at what gazes out, in innocence.
 
Sensation is simply
sensation.
 
And what is this place?
 
Forgetting, I experience
the raw, nude world,
as a fresh  bridegroom
against whose soft mouth
I open this little mouth,
or a tree full of apples
who seem to wrap my teeth and tongue,
and lavish my throat with frothy juice,
or as the sway of a mother’s arms,
rocking me one way and then the other
as I go through life.
 
In this cradle,
life’s encounters
are the muffled sounds
in the room
as the baby
blinks her eyes
in simple wonder.
 
 

I am peeling away the matrix
with my hands, my heart, my teeth.
Beneath the floor: green moss and cool water.
Behind the walls: a breeze,
smelling of sage and desert flowers,
through which feathers tumble
and land on our keyboards, our desks,
our faces, get caught in our hair.


I pull out all of the plugs where we have been hooked
to the machine whose time is dying.


At first we are like corpses; without the drugs
being pumped through our bodies, we recognize
how withered we have become.
Our souls quiver like frightened animals
whose eyes had to close to bear the weight
of slavery.


We blink and blink in the new light.


Up through the cracks come the waters of creation.
We open our parched mouths
and drink.
And drink.


When we are strong enough to crawl,
we move towards each other,
and towards the trees whose ready arms
have been waiting for us.
It seems they never stopped waiting for us.


Rifling through remnants of the past era of destruction,
we discover they are made of stones, bones and electric rivers,
rivers which can be turned back to feed the mouths of our children,
instead of destroying the children of our enemies.


…How can She ever be lost?
Even in a drama set on covering Her over and tying Her in knots?
She is the fabric of which we are made.

So long as one tiny pebble remains in the middle of the city,
It can be the one spark that, placed in the whirring motor,
stops the works, and, with the power of Kali, breaks
the neck of the demon that would devour its own mother,
our own mother.


The demon who, when he remembers the wellspring
which has made all of his creations possible,
transforms into a cowering animal licking his wounds.


Mama says: “Come rest in my waters, and heal yourself, dear demon.”


For it is only by remembering our Oneness
that we can keep up this dance of difference
With any kind of decency.


Beneath the floorboards: a mossy river.
Behind the light sockets: nests of birds.
The towering poles and buildings bearing wires that zigzag
through streets and over highways…
Look again: a mighty forest of trees.


One half of my heart singing in the remembering
that nothing true is ever, EVER lost,
the other half breaking again and again,
as it witnesses the story of forgetfulness reaching its extreme.


I break and I hold strong,
I fly and I crawl on my bleeding belly with mud in my mouth.
Can these two creatures both be me?


I am amazed at this place we call Duality.


I seem to remember us parting, in the Garden,
so that we could behold ourselves, saying, “Beloved.”
So that we could touch ourselves and be surprised
by Love’s animation of fingers, toes, eyes, mouths.


How did we get here?
How have we come to reject the very Beloved
We pulled from our own ribs?


I am humming with the memory of the Garden.


May I be a bridge.

True Humility is not powerlessness.  
True Humility is dissolving into the vast power of Source,
​such that one becomes One with that Power. ​